Re: More info: 2.1.108 page cache performance on low memory

Eric W Biederman
1998-07-26T15:05:56Z

On 23 Jul 1998, Zlatko Calusic wrote:

> "Stephen C. Tweedie" <sct@redhat.com> writes:
>
> > Hi,
> >
> > On 20 Jul 1998 11:15:12 +0200, Zlatko Calusic <Zlatko.Calusic@CARNet.hr>
> > said:
> >
> > > I don't know if its easy, but we probably should get rid of buffer
> > > cache completely, at one point in time. It's hard to balance things
> > > between two caches, not to mention other memory objects in kernel.
> >
> > No, we need the buffer cache for all sorts of things. You'd have to
> > reinvent it if you got rid of it, since it is the main mechanism by
> > which we can reliably label IO for the block device driver layer, and we
> > also cache non-page-aligned filesystem metadata there.
>
> Even I didn't investigate it that lot, I still see Erics work on
> adding dirty page functionality as a step toward this.

>From where I sit it looks completly possible to give the buffer cache a
fake inode, and have it use the same mechanisms that I have developed for
handling other dirty data in the page cache. It should also be possible
in this effort to simplify the buffer_head structure as well.

As time permits I'll move in that direction.

Eric